Spontaneous winter expedition

The flood wave that has rolled down the Elbe into the North Sea since Christmas has been monitored and sampled by researchers from four Helmholtz Centers in a coordinated effort - a rare opportunity to study its effects on the river and estuary. The data obtained will help to better understand future risks and make predictions. The Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon is also involved.

From the beginning of the flood at the end of December, researchers led by Dr Norbert Kamjunke from the UFZ followed the peak of the flood wave from land for eight days: from Bad Schandau on the German-Czech border to Lauenburg near Hamburg. Access to the river was often difficult due to the flooding of the Elbe River banks, so most of the samples were taken from bridges along the course of the river.
Downstream of the Geesthacht weir, the Hereon researchers took over the flood wave monitoring in the tidal Elbe. Despite the short lead time, their investigations were actively supported by the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) and the Glückstadt-Wischhafen ferry company (FRS), which made the targeted sampling along the tidal river possible in the first place, says Hereon physicist Dr Götz Flöser.

The fact that the year 2024, when the ElbeXtreme project starts, begins with this special data collection is a great opportunity from a scientific perspective. Dr Ingeborg Bußmann, project manager at the AWI: "After the past extreme low water situations, we can now start our project with the collection of an unprecedented data set of flood events." The collected data will help to better understand future risks and make more reliable predictions.

Extreme flooding and low water events are likely to occur more frequently in the future due to climate change. Researchers therefore need to understand the impact of these events and their consequences for ecosystems. As part of ElbeXtreme, findings on the impact of these events on socio-ecological systems are being collected and adaptation and mitigation options are being developed in consultation with stakeholders.

MOSES stands for "Modular Observation Solutions for Earth Systems". In this initiative coordinated by the UFZ, nine research centers of the Helmholtz Association have jointly set up mobile and modular observation systems between 2017 and 2021 to investigate the effects of temporally and spatially limited dynamic events such as extreme precipitation and runoff events or droughts on the long-term development of earth and environmental systems.

Starting this year, the ElbeXtreme project coordinated by GEOMAR will investigate the effects of physical-oceanographic extreme events on ecosystem services in the Elbe estuary. It is part of the research mission "Towards improved risk management in the area of marine extreme events and natural hazards (mareXtreme)" of the Deutsche Allianz Meeresforschung (DAM), an alliance of German marine research with the federal government and the northern German states of Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Niedersachsen and Schleswig-Holstein, funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF).